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An 3liitr0&urti0n 



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Yarmouth Personages 

An Introduction 



An attempt to revive the memory of 
iridividuals whose names were once 
household words in old North Yarmouth 
and Yarmouth. 



WILLIAM HUTCHINSON ROWE 



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Foreword. 



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A town's richest heritage is her history. 
The memory of the men and women, her 
^ sons and daughters, who have linked their 
5jj names with hers, helped to form her ideals, 
tv, bring to pass her achievements and make her 
name known to the world, should be treas- 
ured as jewels, nor, indeed, should they 
be hidden away between the unturned pages 
of musty historical records, but set in the 
appropriate matrix of the living imagina- 
tions of the present generation. 

Richer would be the lives of the men and 
women of the Yarmouth of to-day were they 
better acquainted with the men and women 
of the Yarmouth of yesterday. With a more 
loving zeal would they believe in and work 
for the future of their town did they realize 
the worth of its past. 

We fear that our sketches of these per- 
sonages have been but clumsy; brief and cir- 
cumstantial they were of necessity, yet they 
may serve as introductions which will lead to 
a better acquaintance growing from more to 
more, till on the eastern bank of the river 
which bears his name our imaginations build 
once again the log house of William Royall; 
till we cannot pass Callen Point without a 
thrill when we think of gallant Captain 
Gendall; till Parson Oilman with his great 
wig and gold topped cane is a part of our 
daily life and the heart sighs at the mention 
of Edward Thaxter. 

Time has proved these worthy of your 
acquaintance. 



Personages. 

WILLIAM ROYALL 



CAPT. WALTER GENDALL 



REV. AMMI RHUHAMAH CUTTER 



JUDGE JEREMIAH POWELL 



JOSEPH WEARE 



REV. TRISTRAM OILMAN 



JUDGE DAVID MITCHELL 



GEN. EDWARD RUSSELL 



ALEXANDER BARR 



ELIZABETH OAKES SMITH 



DR. ELEAZER BURBANK 



EDWARD THAXTER 



William Royall. 



The beautiful river on whose banks he was 
the first to settle will forever memorialize 
the name of William Royall. 

Nearly three hundred years ago Governor 
Endicott received a letter introducing our 
pioneer as a cooper and clapboard cleaver 
and he was welcomed to Salem where for 
several years he worked at his trade, in the 
meantime, wooing and marrying Phoebe 
Green the step daughter of Samuel Cole, 
Boston's first confectioner and tavern 
keeper. 

Ten or more years later he came to Casco 
Bay and in 1643 purchased of Gorges a tri- 
angle containing about two thousand acres 
bounded by what are now Cousins and Royall 
Rivers and a line running from the first falls 
of the latter to the convergence of the 
branches of the former. 

Among the first settlers of the province 
he was held in esteem and his name often 
appears in places of public honor. Thirty 
years or more he improved his plantation 
till, old age drawing on, he deeded it to his 
two sons, William and John, and moved to 
Dorchester where in 1676 he died. 

Romantic in the extreme is the later his- 
tory of the family. It would be interesting 
could we tell of his son John who was ran- 
somed from the Indians by Baron Castine; 
of his grandson Isaac, the adventurer of 
Antigua; of history great grandson, Colonel 
Royall and his lordly estate in Medford; or to 
trace the family fine by which the Palmers, 
a Baronial house of England, find their 
maternal ancestry leading them back to 
William Royall "cooper and cleaver" of 
"Westcustogo in Casco Bay." 



Capt. Walter Gendall. 

Plymouth had her soldier in Captain Miles 
Standish, North Yarmouth her soldier and 
hero in Captain Walter Gendall. His was a 
life so filled with romance, adventure and 
achievement that it would furnish material 
for a Waverly novel. His was a death so 
tragic and heroic that Scott alone could do 
it justice. 

In telling of him much must be omitted 
and a great deal crowded into little space. 
He was an Englishman, came as a youth to 
the Trelawney Plantation about 1640, settled 
in Scarborough, married Joan Guy of Fal- 
mouth and had many adventures and held 
many officesin the various neigh boringtowns. 
In 1680 he bought land in North Yarmouth 
and the next year erected a prosperous es- 
tablishment at Pumgustuk Falls, his saw 
mill producing 100,000 feet of lumber yearly. 
Soon, however, the second Indian war broke 
out and on the banks of Royall's River the 
first blood was shed in the province. John 
Royall's house on the eastern side was a 
garrison. The government ordered Gendall 
to build a second on the opposite bank. The 
men going to their work on this in September 
1688, met Indians who soon proved hostile. 
Few in number the English retired to the 
high river banks where they defended them- 
selves till their ammunition gave out. See- 
ing their plight, Gendall, trusting in his 
favorable standing with the Indians, started 
across with a supply of powder and ball. 
But before he reached the other shore he 
received a mortal wound and mustering his 
last strength he could just throw the needed 
ammunition to his friends and Hved only 
long enough to say, "I have given my life in 
your service." 



Rev. Ammi Ruhamah Cutter, 



On the same day and by the same Council 
that incorporated the First Parish Church, 
November 18, 1730, Rev. Ammi Ruhamah 
Cutter was ordained and made its pastor at 
a salary of one hundred and twenty ounces 
of silver annually. He was then a young 
man of twenty-five, a native of West Cam- 
bridge and a graduate of Harvard. He had 
been chosen by the proprietors as pastor of 
the proposed church after having ministered 
to^'its congregations about a year. His per- 
son was tall and commanding, 'his eye 
piercing and his preaching vigorous and 
original. Too original it would seem for 
his straight-laced congregation for he re- 
mained their pastor only five years. 

He was, however, especially skilled as a 
physician and for seven more years practic- 
ed in town thus holding the double honor of 
being the town's first minister and doctor. 
Here also he found his wife Dorothy Brad- 
bury. 

The general court in 1742, recognizing his 
probity and general discretion, appointed him 
keeper of an Indian trading post or "truck 
house" at Saco where he remained three 
years. His active mind found occupation in 
compiling a dictionary and grammar of the 
dialects of the Ossipee and Pegwacket tribes 
to facilitate his intercourse with them. 

He accompanied General Pepperel on the 
famous Louisburg expedition as the Com- 
mander of a company and after the surrend- 
er of the place, remained as chief surgeon, 
but an epidemic breaking out, he died in 
March, 1746 at the 'early age of forty-one, 
after a life remarkable for its great energy, 
activity and usefulness. 



Jeremiah Powell. 

It is significant of the quality of the early 
inhabitants of North Yarmouth, that of their 
number four were selected to be Judges of 
the Court of Common Pleas of Cumberland 
County. They were Jeremiah Powell, Jonas 
Mason, David Mitchell and John Lewis. 

The father of the first of these was John 
Powell, who left a Boston home and busi- 
ness to settle in the backwoods, and taking 
a wild lot on the shores of Broad Cove, 
eventually turned the wilderness into a 
garden, built an elegant mansion and lived 
in lordly style. Jeremiah was born in Bos- 
ton in 1720, his mother being the sister of 
Lieut. Governor Dummer and his uncle 
whose name he bore, the celebrated agent of 
Massachusetts at the Court of Queen Anne. 
When his father died, in 1742, he took his 
establishment at North Yarmouth. At the 
early age of twenty-five, he was sent as rep- 
resentative and served the town in this 
position seventeen years, when he was chos- 
en into the Provincial Council. In 1763 he 
became chief justice of Cumberland County, 
which seat he held for eighteen years. 

He was an enterprising man of business 
and the Powell estate lost nothing under 
his management. Among his many projects 
was the iron works at Gooch's Falls, which 
he started in company with Theophilus By- 
ram. Late in life he married Miss Sarah 
Bloomfield of Boston but they had no chil- 
dren. He was a friend of George Whitfield, 
and was in Newburyport on the night of 
the famous evangelist's death. In 1784, he 
died at his home. His colored coachman, 
Boston, and Dinah, the cook, together with 
the glorious hospitality dispensed by him, 
yet live in the imaginations of the people. 



Joseph Weare. 



Those to whom the names of Royall, Gen- 
dall, Cutter or Powell are meaningless, can 
nevertheless tell long stories of, ' 'Joe Weare, 
the Scout. ' ' His personality has formed the 
nucleus in our community, around which 
have gathered the traditions told for years, 
regarding some local hero from the Susque- 
hannah to the Penobscot. Dark, bony, ca- 
pable of great endurance, six feet two inches 
in height and "full of strategy" he captured 
the imaginations of the people and doubtless 
did them great service in giving special 
attention to the enemies of civilization. 

At his birth, March 9, 1737, he inherited 
a hate for the Indians, for, twelve years be- 
fore, his mother's father, Joseph Felt, had 
been killed by them at Broad Cove and his 
grandmother and the younger children car- 
ried into captivity under circumstances of 
extreme cruelty. 

When twenty-three years old he had a 
saw mill near where the cotton mill stands 
and an old account book kept by him at 
that time is still in existance, in the pos- 
session of Edward A. Woods of Pittsburg, 
Penn, He had married in 1760 Mary Noyes 
and the immediate cause of the purchase of 
the book seems to be to record the birth of 
their first child, Nathaniel. Not a word 
about Indians occurs from beginning to end. 
Nine children were born to them, but the 
family name has now become extinct, al- 
though the good blood flows in the veins of 
several Yarmouth families. 

While on a trip to Boston, he died at 
about the age of forty and his body lies in 
the "old Indian burying ground" below the 
Ledge. 



Rev. Tristram Gilman. 



Enshrined in the holy of holies of the fath- 
er's memory and even after a hundred years 
spoken with reverence by those who know 
him only by tradition, the name of Parson 
Gilman shines brightly in the early chroni- 
cles of the church and town. 

Born in 1734 in Exeter, N. H. and in 1757 
a graduate of Harvard, he was settled as 
fourth pastor of the First Parish in December 
1769, His first sermon was preached from 
the text, "For other foundation can no man 
lay than is laid, which is Christ Jesus," and 
his forty years of successful labor and bless- 
ed ministry was a fitly framed building of 
gold, silver and precious stones on the sure 
foundation. 

He was a fine example of the best type of 
our colonial clergymen, strong in body and 
mind, studious, decidedly evangelical and 
giving himself at all times with diligence and 
enterprise to the duties of his calling. His 
service covered the days of the Revolution 
and the critical period following, and we 
find him an ardent patriot, even in the dis- 
couraging year of 1776 preaching his annual 
Thanksgiving Day sermon from Psalm 34:1. 
In 1791 the "Great Revival" broke out which 
broughthischurch an addition of ninety- two. 
Three hundred and two were admitted dur- 
ing his whole pastorate. He anticipated 
the Sunday School and there are many fire- 
side stories told of the Parson sitting on the 
deacons' seat of the "Old Church Under the 
Ledge," catechising the children and ex- 
plaining and applying the ten command- 
ments. In 1809 he died. Like Goldsmith's 
village preacher he had for nearly half a 
century, — "Allured to brighter worlds and 
led the way." 



David Mitchell. 



The name of Mitchell has always been an 
honored one in North Yarmouth. Of eight 
deacons of the First Parish Church bearing 
that name, David is the third. He was 
born in Pembroke in 1728 and came to North 
Yarmouth when about fifteen with his fath- 
er, Deacon Jacob, and settled in the Mitchell 
Garrison which we of the later generation 
knew as the "Old Whitcomb Place." His 
capabilities were such that he was sent to 
Harvard and was the first of that name 
enrolled on its catalogue. He prepared for 
the ministry, but his eyesight failing, he 
gave this up and taught the grammar school 
of the town, excelling in this profession. 
When thirty-three he married Lucretia, the 
eldest daughter of Rev. Nicholas Loring, 
and the next year was elected town clerk 
and continued to be reelected thirty-three 
years in succession. Many most important 
offices were held by him during the Revolu- 
tionary War and he took an active part in 
explaining and recommending the new Con- 
stitution. He served as representative to 
the Provincial Congress, was in the Mass- 
achusetts Senate, was first treasurer of the 
Trustees of Bowdoin College and served for 
eighteen years as Judge of the Cumberland 
Court of Common Pleas, being part of that 
time its chief justice. In the spring of 1796 
while attending the Senate, his final sick- 
ness came upon him and he returned to 
North Yarmouth to die. 

Parson Oilman in his funeral sermon 
speaks of him as "a worthy model in all the 
stations of life '^' '^' * a finished gentlemen 
of the old school *' * * a teacher by precept 
and example." 



Edward Russell. 



Of all Yarmouth's notable sons none ever 
held a more honorable place in the councils 
of the state than General Edward Russell. 
His father was a much respected physician 
of the town and his mother a descendent of 
the distinguished Phillips family of Andover, 
so that Edward came into the world August 
31, 1782 endowed with the best that blood 
can give. 

At the age of twenty-one he graduated 
from Harvard and afterward settled in Yar- 
mouth as a justice of the peace, represent- 
ing the town in the Legislature for several 
years. In 1808 he was elected town clerk 
and the clearly written, concise and accu- 
rately reported records of the town for 
twenty-one years are in his handwriting. 
In 1829 he was elected Secretary of State. 
When the paper to raise funds for the erec- 
tion of an academy building was circulated, 
he, jointly with his mother and sister, con- 
tributed the lot now occupied by North Yar- 
mouth Academy and served as Secretary of 
its board of trustees twenty-one years. 
Many were his public offices and honors, — 
Overseer of Bowdoin College, Brigadier 
General of Militia, Director of United States 
Branch Bank and the first corresponding 
secretary of the Maine Historical Society. 

He was much interested in antiquarian 
studies and at the centennial of the town, 
held in 1833, in the old church under the 
ledge, delivered a historical address that is 
the first formal contribution to our written 
history. He also commenced to arrange 
materials for a full history of the town and 
great is our loss that his death in 1835 pre- 
vented this being finished. 



Alexander Barr. 



In the progress of his historical address at 
the Centennial of the town in 1833, General 
Edward Russell paused to point with pride 
to the fact that the man who first set in mo- 
tion machinery for the spinning and carding 
of cotton in New England, was present in 
the audience. This was Alexander Barr, 
who had bought the Powell Estate at Broad 
Cove, comprising what is now the farms of 
Russell and Saint Claire, and was living' 
thereon. 

Alexander and his brother, Robert, were 
Scotchmen who had been trained in the ma- 
chine shops of the celebrated Arkwright, 
and who came to this country about the 
close of the Revolutionary War. In 1786, 
they were commissioned by the Massachu- 
setts Legislature to make a carding machine 
and spinning jinney to serve as a model 
for the cotton spinners of this country, and 
thus are said to have completed the first of 
these machines in the United States. 

The later portion of his life was spent on 
the beautiful shores of the Cove, in what is 
now the town of Cumberland, where he ran 
a mill for grinding plaster, on Felt's Brook, 
and gratified his love of the beautiful by 
planting an orchard and setting out many 
luxuriant shade trees about his home. The 
beautiful avenue of stately elms that border 
the road are a monument to his refined taste 
and industry. At the good old age of eighty 
he died, in 1837, and his headstone still 
stands in the old cemetery. 



Elizabeth Oakes Smith. 



One of the most noted American women 
of her time, beautiful, talented, a poet, 
author and orator, the intimate friend of 
Whipple, Emerson and Theodore Parker, 
North Yarmouth is proud of the honor of 
having been the birthplace of Elizabeth 
Oakes Prince. 

Born in 1806, eighteen years later she mar- 
riedSe^aSmith, himself a poet and gifted man 
of letters, the original Major Jack Down- 
ing and founder of the Portland Courier, the 
first daily newspaper east of Boston. With 
such a couple as a nucleus, their home in 
Patchogue, N. J. to which they went in 
1837, became a noted literary and social 
center in the second third of the last 
century. 

Mrs. Smith was for a time editor of the 
Boston Miscellany, the fore-runner of the 
Atlantic Monthly and was the first woman to 
appear as a public speaker in America. She 
was an ardent abolitionist and advocate of 
woman's rights, while her stories and poems 
drew favorable comment from such compe- 
tent judges as Hawthorne and Lowell. She 
died in 1893 at the age of eighty-seven. 

Much of her happy girlhood was spent at 
the home of her grandfather Prince in what 
is now Cumberland Center, and she has 
drawn a beautiful picture of the family life 
in, "The Last of the Pilgrims, David Prince." 
One other of her stories, "The Defeated 
Life" contains a vivid picture of the Old 
Meeting House Under the Ledge known to 
her as a girl. 



Dr. Eleazer Burbank. 



Around the honored names of the two 
Doctors Burbank, father and son, twines the 
affectionate memory and loving regard of 
many of the older residents of Yarmouth. 
Of Doctor Eleazer, the father, it is our priv- 
ilege to speak at this time. Born in Scar- 
borough in 1793, his strength of character 
manifested itself when, after arriving at his 
majority, he walked the one hundred or more 
miles to Dartmouth College to educate him- 
self for his life work. This done, he settled 
in Poland, where he enjoyed a large practice 
for about eighteen years, when he was in- 
vited by a committee from Yarmouth to fill 
the place left vacant by the death of Doctor 
Gad Hitchcock. While in Poland he mar- 
ried Sophronia, the sister of the elder Hiram 
Ricker. 

Coming to Yarmouth in 1838, for twenty- 
nine years he ministered to the people. He 
had a high reputation, founded on merit 
alone, as a skillful, faithful and intelligent 
physician with a firm unerring judgment 
and a large heartedness which enabled him 
to minister to needs other than those of the 
body. He also took an active and prominent 
part in the affairs of the town, serving many 
years as moderator of the annual meetings. 
In 1857-58 he was elected to the Senate. 

His interest in religious affairs was strong. 
He was a deacon of the Congregational 
Church sixteen years and at the time of his 
death in 1876, held in it six distinct oflfices. 



Edward Russell Thaxter. 



Tears start unbidden in the eyes of many 
even now at the mention of the name of 
Edward Thaxter. Yarmouth lost her son 
of greatest promise and America one of her 
most talented sculptors when the beautiful 
young dreamer of twenty-four left unfinish- 
ed his ideal of "Reverie" to pass to where 
weakness and disease do not hamper and 
one may "draw the thing as he sees it for 
the God of things as they are. ' ' 

Born in Yarmouth, February 15, 1857, his 
genius for sculpture early manifested itself 
even on such unpromising materials as po- 
tatoes, doughnuts, common clay and wood. 
At eighteen he entered Z. 0. Perry's studio 
in Boston and two years later opened one of 
his own in Portland. For further study he 
sailed for Florence in 1872 and gave the 
world his first ideal entitled "Reproof." 
His second was an embodiment of his idea 
of Meg Merrilles. When twenty-four he 
completed his masterpiece, "Love's First 
Dream," which for sheer sweetness and 
pensive beauty of feature, grace and light- 
ness of form, claims the imagination and 
lingers in the memory, not as dead marble 
but as a living Galatea. 

Weakened by overwork after an attack of 
typhoid fever, on his way home he was 
stricken with brain fever at Naples and in 
June, 1881 passed away and was laid to rest 
in the Protestant Cemetery in Florence. 
As one of our own poets, Mrs. E. D. Free- 
man writes; 

' 'The day that glowed with brief and daz- 
zling hope 
Is darkened, and his true and silent heart 

Lies in the breast of that fair, foreign 
land." 



Personals. 

No more interesting or stirring material 
for a true story of sea adventure could be 
found than in the adventures of John Drink- 
water. As mate of a sailing vessel in 1795 
he v^^as spared alone of all the officers when 
the crew mutinied, that he might navigate 
the ship. When, however, the west coast of 
Africa was reached, he with one companion 
was put ashore to starve in that desolate 
land. He found his way amid many perils 
to Cape Town and shipped home in a slaver. 
His hopes of a safe voyage were disspoint- 
ed for a British man-of-war overhauled his 
vessel and he was impiessed into the ser- 
vice where for three years he served, at last 
escaping and reaching Portland in 1802. 
Being obliged to walk from there to his house 
on the f ©reside, he did not arrive until after 
midnight and going to the window of the 
room where his wife slept, he knocked. 
She, supposing some neighbor was sick, 
asked "Who is there?" upon which he re- 
plied, ' 'It is John Drinkwater. ' ' She recog- 
nized his voice and opened the door to give 
a joyful welcome to the husband she had 
for seven years mourned as dead. 



A number of men in the force which went 
up the Kenebec River in 1724 and totally 
destroyed Norridgewock Village, were re- 
cruited in the old domain of North Yarmouth 
before any of its six towns were separa- 
ted from the original territory. Richard 
Jacques who then lived on the southern end 
of Bailey's Island was among them and is 
said to have fired the fatal shot that killed 
Father Rasle. 



Rev. Francis Brown, the fifth pastor of 
the First Parish Church, was called from his 
pastorate here to the presidency of Dart- 
mouth College. 



Captain William A. Howard, who was 
chosen by the United States Government to 
hoist the American flag over our newly ac- 
quired possessions in Alaska, was born in 
Yarmouth in 1807. He entered the navy 
when seventeen and served with distinction 
during the Civil War and in the Revenue 
Marine. He also was appointed by the Ger- 
man Confederacy as second in Command on 
the Weserand superintended the building of 
a navy yard and dock at Brake. 



The first woman in New England and 
probably within the limits of the whole 
Methodist Episcopal Church to be granted 
by the Conf erance the right and freedom to 
exercise her gifts as a local preacher was 
Mrs. Mary Decker Wellcome. She was also 
a writer of more than local reputation and 
for many years contributed to various week- 
ly and monthly periodicals. 



Rev. George Dana Boardman, the "Apostle 
to the Karens," was ordained to his work 
by the Baptist Church in February, 1825. 
Through the courtesy of the Congregation- 
alists, the exercises were held in their build- 
ing, then almost nev/, which the later gen- 
eration knew as the "Old Sloop." 



Professor George Woods, principal of the 
Academy and founder of the old Institute, 
was afterward made Chancellor and Pro- 
fessor of Mental and Moral Sciences in 
Western University, Pittsburg, Penn. 

3477-279 
Lot-K 



Our Pledge. 



Town of our homes as thy past we review, 
Telling over again what the fathers have 

done, 
Of men who were strong and of women steel 

true, 
Of foundations deep laid and work well 

begun; 
Our pledge once more we gladly renew 
0, town of our homes, to be loyal to you. 

Town of our hearts as the beauty we feel, 
Of thy elm-bordered streets and bold, rocky 

shore. 
Of Royall the lovely, that, turning the wheel 
By usefulness adds to her beauty the more; 
Thy praises aloft to the heavens shall soar, 
0, town of our hearts, we will ever adore. 

Town of our hopes as we look out to see 

And find what the years may hold in their 
hand. 

Past and present withdraw and days yet to 
be 

In a glory far greater than others outstand; 

Our allegiance we pledge, thy future de- 
mand, 

0, town of our hopes, by heart and by hand. 



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